"DO NOT BE AFRAID; JUST HAVE FAITH."

13^th Sunday in Year B.  Mark 5:21-43.

AIM: By explaining the difference between superstition and faith, to deepen faith.

 

People who suffer from an incurable illness can become so desperate that they are willing to try anything.  Judging by the amount of mail I receive from advertisers promising Amiracle cures@ for all my aches and pains, I have to conclude that there are a lot of desperate people out there. Most of this mail goes straight into the circular file unopened.

From time to time the media report about desperately ill people journeying to clinics in countries like Mexico and Russia in search of medical treatment not available to them at home. The woman in today=s gospel who had suffered hemorrhages for twelve years is similarly desperate. AShe had suffered greatly at the hands of many doctors,@ Mark tells us, Aand had spent all that she had. Yet she was not helped but only grew worse.@ She comes to Jesus as a last resort. After so many bitter disappointments, she hardly dares to hope for a cure. But what does she have to lose?

Her situation is even more serious than we can realize. For according to the religious law of the day, this woman=s illness makes her ritually unclean. Like lepers in that day, she is excluded from normal society, and anyone who touches her becomes similarly defiled. (Cf. Lev. 15:25-27) By mixing with the crowd and trying to touch Jesus she is deliberately violating this quarantine. This is a measure of her desperation.  AIf I but touch his clothes,@ she tells herself, AI shall be cured.@  Her real interest is less in Jesus= person than in his reputed power. What looks at first sight like faith is closer to superstition.

The Catechism calls superstition is Aa perverse excess of religion ... for example when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition@ (No. 2110f). Here is a modern example this Aperverse excess of religion@ that the Catechism condemns.  Every so often pastors of Catholic parishes find in their churches copies of a supposed novena prayer with the instruction to say it every day for seven days, and to leave copies in seven different churches B and then you=ll get whatever you pray for. That may look like faith. In reality it is superstition. 

Faith is trust in a person. Superstition, on the other hand, is reliance on a power which, if not handled correctly, can become harmful. Hence superstition always contains an element of fear. This explains the woman=s fear when Jesus turns in the crowd and asks: AWho has touched my clothes?@ ARealizing what had happened to her,@ Mark tells us, the woman Aapproached in fear and trembling. She fell down before Jesus and told him the whole truth@ B that she had violated the law of quarantine. 

Notice how Jesus treats this poor woman. Instead of scolding her, he encourages her. Realizing her desperation, Jesus judges the woman=s action more generously that it actually deserves. To this poor, frightened soul, huddled at his feet in fear, Jesus speaks words of reassurance. ADaughter, your faith has saved you.  Go in peace and be cured of your affliction.@

By treating the woman as if she had faith, when in reality she had little more than superstition, Jesus plants in her the seed of true faith. Jesus speaks as if the healing were the consequence of the woman=s faith. In reality her healing is the cause and beginning of faith for this desperate woman.  

Following her healing, Mark resumes his account of the gravely ill girl which he has interrupted to relate the healing of the woman with the hemorrhage. Jesus= words to the girl=s grief stricken father, who has just learned of his daughter=s death, link what follows to the experience of the fearful woman for whom Jesus has just opened the door to faith. ADo not be afraid,@ Jesus tells the father, Ajust have faith.@

There is no need to linger over the details of this second healing miracle. Mark=s purpose in relating it was not so much to preserve the historical record as to make a statement about who Jesus is. This statement begins with Jesus= words to the mourners at the dead girl=s house: AThe child is not dead but asleep.@ That is a religious statement, not a medical one. For the One who has power to raise the dead, Jesus is saying, physical death is no more significant than sleep. What follows illustrates this statement. 

These two intertwined stories of healing have a common theme.  Both contrast fear and faith. Fear shrinks from encountering the one who is feared B as the woman shrinks from Jesus once he senses that she has violated the law of quarantine. Faith, on the other hand, seeks encounter with faith=s object. As long as the woman is motivated by superstition, she must try to keep her encounter with Jesus secret, because of the fear associated with her superstitious belief in Jesus= healing power. Jesus, as we have seen, invites her to move beyond superstition to faith. Faith, like love, casts out fear.  (Cf. 1 John 4:18)

ADo not be afraid; just have faith.@  Jesus= words to the bereaved father, Jairus, were spoken in the face of the thing we fear most of all: death. Jesus speaks these same words to us today. He invites us to move from fear to faith. How fearful many people are! Some fear God as a stern judge waiting to punish them for the slightest infraction of his rules. Others fear not God but themselves: their inadequacy, their weakness, their inability to keep all God=s rules, no matter how hard they try.

What do you fear? We all fear something. Jesus is inviting you to move beyond fear, to faith. When you do, you open the door to Him who is able to do, in you and through you, not merely the unexpected, not merely the improbable or the difficult B but the impossible!